Accela Launches New Civic Application for Fire Prevention to Help Fire Departments Adapt to Changing Public Safety Landscape

SAN RAMON, Calif., June 15, 2020 /PRNewswire/ -- Accela, the leading provider of cloud-based solutions for government, today announced the launch of its Civic Application for Fire Prevention. The solution helps fire departments increase their capacity and effectiveness and ensure they are equipped in the case of emergencies, especially amid an evolving environmental and public safety landscape. It consists of a complete system for managing permitting and inspection processes, including a mobile application available both online and offline to keep fire department staff on track towards inspection targets, process permits faster, and improve business owner visibility. This is the latest addition to Accela's suite of out-of-the-box SaaS Civic Applications and makes product evaluation and procurement processes easier and faster for state and local agencies by packaging the solution with three tiered capabilities based on an agency's budget and need.

"The COVID-19 pandemic and recent incidents of civic unrest has presented unprecedented challenges for cities and states across the country and brought a renewed focus on the importance of public safety," said Jonathon (JK) Knight, Chief Customer Officer at Accela. "Fire departments are core to any local emergency response and require robust digital tools with the flexibility to adapt to changing conditions. Our new Civic Application for Fire Prevention will help departments enhance public safety, increase productivity, and build resilience as they navigate the current public health crisis, protests, and beyond."

Accela's new Fire Prevention Civic Application automates all aspects of permitting, licensing, and inspection processes for fire departments to increase emergency preparedness. The solution moves all workflows and functions online, removing paper and manual steps, and significantly streamlines the complexities of the plan review, inspection, and permitting processes so agencies can focus on fire prevention and public safety outreach. It also provides a seamless mobile experience for field inspections to increase productivity, enable team inspections, simplify staff training, and minimize person-to-person interactions among firefighters and fire inspectors.

The City of Oakland, California's fire department is leveraging Accela to help streamline their fire permitting and field inspections to reach more facilities in less time.

"Before Accela, we would spend three weeks printing, collating, and pre-sorting the inspection forms, and delivering them to each fire station responsible for those areas. After the inspections were finished, the forms had to be physically picked up by the Fire Prevention team and filed away in the Fire Prevention Bureau, resulting in lots of trips back and forth–just to deliver pieces of paper," says Oakland Fire Department Captain Anthony Sanders. "Now, the inspection data is captured as we're in the field on our tablets, and we don't need to do that double-data entry anymore – it's saved a lot of time."

The Fire Prevention Civic Application is the newest offering in Accela's suite of Civic Applications. These out-of-the-box solutions provide "consumer-like" experiences for citizens, shorten time to value, and come pre-built with valuable best practices. The Fire Prevention Civic Application is the first in the series designed to make product evaluation and procurement processes more streamlined for governments to speed implementation and improve the economics. Accela is offering the Fire Prevention Civic Application in packages -- titled Essentials, Extended and Enterprise -- ranging from low to high complexity for fire departments to choose from based on their size, budget, and individual needs. Larger or more complex fire departments can leverage all pre-built components of the system that are available to smaller or less complex department requirements, with the added capability to customize on top of Accela's preconfigured technology. These packages also facilitate quicker installation processes and include training and user guides to reduce the burden of managing software to give agencies more time and resources to properly handle emergencies.

Today's announcement builds on Accela's efforts to help cities leverage cloud technology to respond to high levels of citizen requests during times of crisis. More than 80 percent of Accela's new customers purchased solutions in the cloud, and 66 percent of all Accela customers are now in the cloud. Accela recently launched its suite of COVID-19 Response Solutions to help cities and states respond to the biggest challenges of the current pandemic. These cloud-based solutions were developed to enable agencies to provide online citizen services while working remotely, including scheduling healthcare workers and volunteers, conducting mobile and virtual inspections to help field workers continue critical, timely inspections or construction projects as scheduled, and more. They can be rapidly implemented in as little as 24-72 hours, depending on the solution, to empower agencies to adapt to the circumstances quickly.

To learn more about Accela Civic Solutions, please visit https://www.accela.com/solutions/.

About Accela
Accela provides market-leading cloud solutions that empower the most innovative state and local governments worldwide to build thriving communities, grow businesses, and protect citizens. More than 275 million citizens globally benefit from Accela's solutions, powered by Microsoft Azure, for permitting, licensing, code enforcement, and service request management. Accela's fast-to-implement Civic Applications, built on its robust and extensible Civic Platform, help agencies address specific needs today while ensuring they are prepared for any emerging or complex challenges in the future. Accela is headquartered in San Ramon, California, with additional offices around the world. For more information, visit www.accela.com.

Contact: Kate Helete, (805) 458-5093, [email protected]

SOURCE Accela

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